Little Miss Muffet

The well known nursery rhyme goes like this: 

Little Miss Muffet,

Sat on a tuffet

eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider

who sat down beside her

and frightened little Miss Muffet away.

There is a dark side to this, and it's so disturbing that I was reluctant to post it for ages. It goes back to the early 17th century, and might be earlier. There was a young girl named Patience Muffet who became very ill. Her father was a doctor, and he put dead spiders in medicines that he gave to the sick. His name was Dr Thomas Muffet and he believed that dead spiders was an important ingredient for cures. He gave Patience the spider medicine too!     

What prompted me to post about it was that a similar thing happened to both me and then to my daughter. I was sat down while using the laptop during lunch when an enormous daddy long legs spider came dangling down in front of me. I had to put it outside. The next day, my teenaged daughter was having her breakfast and then a big spider appeared next to her. The experience was freaky and unnerving. 

Some people would say it was luck! They also say it's lucky to tread on poo by accident and also considered "lucky" to have birds' droppings fall on you outside! Having two different spiders come and sit down basically wasn't so much "lucky" at all but a moment of panic. It was more like an encounter with the minions of that evil Middle Earth tarantula queen Shelob.  

She Wolf Night

Ghost ladies of Dalzell House

 In the picturesque town of Motherwell, UK, there is a very old castle named Dalzell House. It's a home to three ghostly ladies and each of them glows a bright colour. The history of Dalzell House began during the Dark Ages in the year 843 when it had been used for royalty in the hunting season, then became built upon as home of the Dalzell family during the 1400's. In 1645 the earl of Dalzell House passed the estate to his nephew, James Hamilton, and it became the Hamilton residence afterwards. It went through a lot of extensions and restorations over the many years, and the last of the Hamilton's died in 1952 when the castle was made into a boarding school until 1967. It then became property of the local council and a section of it were made into private apartments during the 1980's. It's now a protected historical A listed building. 

The three spirits of Dalzell House are well known and also give the castle it's spooky charm. One is grey, one is green and the other is white. It's worth mentioning that no one knows who these ghosts are, and is anyone's guess. The apparitions appear in different places. The grey lady haunts the north wing of the castle and she wears an old fashioned nurse's uniform. Dalzell House was briefly a military hospital during the First World War and there would've been nurses working there, but the identity of the grey lady spirit is unknown. 

The green lady has been seen in the south wing of the castle. Witnesses have said the green lady ghost appears to have red eyes and smells of spiced flowers. When it was a school, a boy saw the green lady in the Piper's Gallery, and she passed through a wall and floated in front of him. While scared, the boy also claimed the green lady didn't seem malicious or threatening. 

The white lady is seen throughout the castle and in the garden. It's believed she might've been a victim of a tragic love story and was walled up inside the castle or she was so upset that she flung herself from a tower. Some have seen her watching them and she appears looking out of windows or in the grounds during dusk. A certain dog walker was taking photographs and found an eerie spectre in the Peel Tower. The three colourful ghost ladies are a mystery.

She Wolf Night   

Tam Lin

 

We're approaching Midsummer and there are a number of curious stories about fairies. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a famous play by William Shakespeare and it's set in ancient Greece, with the plot of fairies. There are oral folk stories about fairies, and one of them is a love story. This is a story about Tam Lin/Tamlayne (or Tamlin), as mentioned in the Medieval 39th Child Ballad folk story from England and Scotland.

In the enchanting woods of Carterhaugh, where there is an old well and a figure of Tam Lin, a young handsome knight who was often seen there riding a milk white horse. He waited for maidens to travel through the woods alone, so that he could ask for a gift in exchange to letting them continue walking through the woods. If they couldn't offer him anything of value like that, he would instead have his way with them. It was then he encountered a beautiful young woman named Janet, who went there to pick a rose. On this encounter, Tam Lin appeared to her and asked for a gift so that he would let her pass. She told him that she was the daughter of the Earl, who owned the land itself, so it was her place. It's also believed that she fell in love with him, because she let him close to her. Days after Janet returned home, it was soon discovered that she was pregnant. 

She told her father that the man who caused her pregnancy was an "elf knight". Janet went back to Carterhaugh to locate herbs to cause a miscarriage. Again she plucked a rose and Tam Lin appeared. He knew of her intentions to find a poison so she would miscarry, and asked her why she planned to do this. Janet asked him where he came from and who was he really. Tam Lin said he used to be a mortal man, who once fell off his horse and was soon discovered by the Fairy Queen, who took him into her realm, which is beautiful and magical but every seven years they have to pay a tiend to Hell, so the fairy folk will journey there and pass Miles Cross to get to Hell, and Janet can help Tam Lin during then when the fairy folk visit Hell. 

That night came and Janet saw the milk white horse, where she joined him and had to grab hold of his hand, then he became a number of creatures. Eventually he turned into a naked man, and she covered him with a green mantle to hide him. However the Fairy Queen was aware of this and angrily said that she regretted not removing Tam Lin's eyes. Janet and Tam Lin returned to the mortal realm and lived happily every after.

For more info visit Tam Lin Balladry: https://tam-lin.org/

She Wolf Night    

Werewolf of Denbigh

 

There's a well known legend about a werewolf from the town of Denbigh in Wales. It happened during a full red moon night in 1790. Denbigh is in North Wales. Throughout the region, people were nervous as they believed the moon turning red was a bad sign. On that night there was a stagecoach travelling on a road between Denbigh and Wrexham when the moon above was showing to be an eerie bloodred colour. The stagecoach was then attacked by a huge wolflike beast. It was described as having jet black fur and being of the same size as a horse. The beast killed one of the two coach horses while the other broke free and escaped. 

The following year, a farmer had a terrifying encounter with the strange huge black wolflike beast. He found enormous wolflike tracks in the snow that was much bigger than usual, so he followed the trail. He came upon a gruesome scene of blood drenched snow of dozens of mutilated farm animals. He was horrified to witness a very large black wolf killing his dog, that saw him and decided to chase. The farmer ran to the nearest barn and locked himself in, but the large wolf crashed against the door so heavily that he was afraid it would break the door down. It stopped banging for a moment, and then looked into the window to look for the terrified farmer. 

The farmer was hiding under a table armed only with a pitchfork, but he was able to see the huge wolf clearly through the window. It was standing up on it's hind legs like a man, and then looked closely up against the window. It had humanlike features, and its eyes were a blue colour and there was something intelligent about the creature. Already it was foaming at the mouth. Soon the wolf entity left the window and killed more livestock. Later on after learning about what happened to the farmer, the local church organised a hunting party. Villagers were armed with muskets and pitchforks. However, after a long freezing night looking for the creature, they found only it's tracks in the snow. 

Everything went quiet in Denbigh, until the 20th century when reports of a large black wolf killing animals started. A newspaper reported a dangerous huge black furred predator from as recent as 1992. Eye witnesses thought it was a bear, while others speculate it's the return of the werewolf of Denbigh. 

She Wolf Night

Tietuo Mountain

So many elderly men have gone out hiking alone in the wilderness and never returned. Some have sadly been found deceased, such as celebrities Julian Sands and Michael Mosley. Many others are still missing.  I want to focus on a particular story about a missing man named Ren Tiesheng, a retired school teacher from Beijing, China. Unlike other missing cases, this one is a total bizarre mystery.

On 30th September 2008, Ren Tiesheng was 61 years old and very fit, with decades of experience in mountaineering. He told his wife that he would be going out to Mount Miaofeng, which was close by where they lived. It was planned he would contact her throughout his trip and send photographs. He packed up food, drink and papers to help tie on trees as a method for finding his way back. He was also looking forward to going to a family celebration that he didn't want to miss. However, his wife heard nothing from him. Worried, she then contacted the police. 

During the search on Mount Miaofeng, the journey of Ren didn't stop there. He ended up going on a trail further away. The search party came across a seller in a shop who claimed to have seen Ren, asking about where to buy nuts. The seller told him there was a place in Wangpin. So after the police visited the town of Wangpin and spoke to more eye witnesses who saw Ren, they were led to a town called Tuofeng. Ren's phone records revealed he was at a village called Zenfang, but further searches found Ren's campsite in the wilderness, with bits of newspaper and a handwritten note. The note was itself was quite baffling.

Many came forward to explain how they disliked hiking on Mount Tietuo because it was treacherous and full of unusual incidents. One of the hikers was approached by a strange group of people that appeared from further up, who simply stared at him and said nothing, making him turn back. Another claimed to see a man running around with an axe. But on searching Mount Tietuo for missing Ren, there was a number of human bones that were discovered. Some say there was a serial killer, that may be, but the bodies come from different eras, as far back as WW2. None of these human remains belong to Ren and he's still missing. Could it be possible that the group of strange people were ghosts of the dead who were later found?

According to travel sites, Tietuo Mountain is dangerous for hiking, It's got old mining pits and some are hidden that can be extremely threatening if someone were to fall in. Some call the location including ancient roads around it from Beijing, a "Bermuda Triangle" type of site. Many people who venture there are still on the lookout for Ren, who's still missing. The search continues.  

She Wolf Night   

Cryptid news June

Be careful what you read. There's been some scary "cryptid" encounter in Ohio when a school went into lockdown. The hairy creature was seen by many, including students and teachers, who were at the Firelands Local School District. It was no ordinary day of school, and many people became scared and excited when they saw Bigfoot running past windows of the school, disrupting classes. However this story may seem weird but just please bare in mind that was a hoax. It turned out that the "Bigfoot" was really a parent of one of the students' playing pranks. How this managed to get into the news headlines is also a wonder. 

Bigfoot doesn't like to show off in front of so many people. It seems they keep a low profile and only very few people manage to see them. You'll be lucky if you saw one but some may think that would be unlucky as there are conflicting opinions among believers in Bigfoot: Some view the creature as a benign, docile part of nature, who should be respected. Others take the opposite view that Bigfoot is dangerous and evil. Btw Bigfoot is also called Sasquatch.   

A story by a man called Mark living in California witnessed his daughter with a strange creature near the woods. It was described as huge, about seven or eight feet tall and covered in thick brown hair. Both girl and the entity were communicating, then when the girl ran to her parents, the creature stood up and walked into the woods. They never saw it again. 

Onto a story about a different cryptid. There is a clip taken by CCTV on a farm showing a tiny goblin running across the road in Monterrey, Mexico. To view short footage go to the Unexplained Mysteries page on the link Here

She Wolf Night